Piccolini is a wonderful opportunity for students in Grades 1-4 to get involved in a high-quality, fun choir! It is a district-wide choir, so students will be coming from all over Burnaby to participate.

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The choir is an opportunity for students to develop their musicality in a fun and supportive environment. It provides both learning and performing opportunities, and serves as a stepping stone to other district ensembles for intermediate students, such as Corovoce Burnaby Youth Choir and Sound Wave Handbell Choir.

Auditions for Piccolini will be held on September 26 from 3:30-5:00 in order of arrival at Marlborough Elementary School (6060 Marlborough Avenue).
Rehearsals will take place on Tuesdays from 4:00-5:00 at Marlborough Elementary in the band room. The first rehearsal will take place on October 3 at 4:00. A fee of $75 will be charged to cover the cost of music, t-shirts, and to help cover the costs for tour transportation. This fee can be paid through School Cash Online.

Just a reminder about the wonderful Burnaby program designed to get musical instruments into every family home in Burnaby!

If you would like to learn an instrument, apply here and you can get an instrument for FREE for one year to try it out!

HARMONY FOR ALL

We have some wonderful district ensembles that I want to tell you about!

Corovoce is the Burnaby District Choir for children in grade 4 and higher. It’s a wonderful opportunity for your child to sing with likeminded children who love to sing and who love music. They perform at Michael J. Fox theatre twice per year and learn wonderful skills weekly.

They need to be referred by their music teacher, so just let me know if you intend on having your child audition and I will support that. You can email me at sonja.karlson@burnabyschools.ca

The Choir will rehearse on Mondays from 3:30 to 4:45 pm at South Slope Elementary in the school gym. The first rehearsal will be held Monday, September 18, 2023. A fee of $75.00 will be charged to cover the cost of music, t-shirts and to help offset costs for tour transportation, and professional development for directors. School online cash is the preferred payment method.
If you would like your child to be auditioned for CoroVoce (Burnaby District Youth Choir), please complete the attached permission form and bring it with you to the audition on Monday, June 19. If you have questions or would like further information, please e-mail the director, Teresa Jukich at: Teresa.jukich@burnabyschools.ca

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Piccolini is the district choir for younger children in grades 1-3. A notice about Piccolini will be posted here in September. Rehearsals will take place at Marlborough Elementary school on Tuesdays after school. Marlborough school is near Metrotown. Again, the students will be learning wonderful singing skills and make friends with other kids who love to sing and perform.

And Soundwave is the district handbell ensemble. In order to join, your child must be in grade 4 piano at least and going into grade 7 at school. Let me know if you want your child to audition, and I’ll send you the letter via email. sonja.karlson@burnabyschools.ca

Armstrong Talent Show 2023

Great job to all of the participants of the 2023 Armstrong Talent Show!

It was an amazing show and everyone worked very hard to make it fun and exciting! Congratulations to all of the presenters. It is very brave of them to defy stage-fright fears and get up in front of their peers to perform. And thank you to the back stage crew of Chavez Dunbar, Jaila Franklin, Magdalene Tesfamariam and Gemma Ji. Also thank you and great work to our hosts: Benny Thomas, Sienna Mah, Peighton MacDonald, Rachel MacPherson and Wren Andersen.

It has been a while since I have posted here, and I apologize for that. Concerts are so all-encompassing for a music teacher! And then it was Spring Break! I had a productive and restful break, so I am ready to move on now for the rest of the spring. I hope everyone feels the same.

The Kindergartens are going to be mostly exploring the concept of HIGH AND LOW.

The grade ones will be working on movement and reading and playing in simple SOLFEGE.

Grade 2/3s are also playing xylophone, starting to learn how to read music notation and translate those skills onto an instrument.

Grade 4/5s are doing the next level of RECORDER HEROES.

Grade 6/7s are doing a research project on a musician/humanitarian/minority artist.

Our concert play is set in the 1980s. We are collecting some things to use as props and costume pieces in our concert. If you can lend them or donate them, they would be greatly appreciated. If you would like your items back after the concert, please make sure you put your name somewhere on the items.

We need some landline phones that would have been used in the 1980s.

We also are collecting costume pieces like:

legwarmers
parachute pants
bangles
necklaces
belts
exercise headbands and wristbands
neon coloured clothes
sunglasses
fanny packs
gold chains (fake of course)
any clothes that have a vintage 80s look to them
feminine blouses

These can be dropped off at the music room or at the office.

Thank you!

Hello Armstrong Community!

As you may have heard from the students of Armstrong, we are busily preparing for a Concert which will take place on March 1st and 2nd.

Odd Divisions will perform on March 1st. Even Divisions will perform on March 2nd. Exceptions to this rule are that Division 20 will perform on March 1st and Division 19 will perform on March 2nd.

If you click on the links above for your child’s grade group, you will see the dances and musical numbers each class is starting to prepare. You can use these videos to begin practicing for the concert at home.

Our concert will be in the form of a musical play. The students in grade 6 and 7 have had the opportunity to sign up to be in the cast and have met a couple of times and gotten their scripts.

The rehearsal schedule will be as such:
We will rehearse on Thursdays and Fridays at lunchtime, starting in the music room.
On February 13th and 15th we will practice after school from 3:00 until 4:30pm.
On February 22nd and 27th we will practice from 3:00 until 5:00 for a full run through and a technical rehearsal respectively.

Please always communicate with Ms. Karlson if your child will not be able to attend one of these rehearsals if they are in the cast.

Other opportunities to help with the concert will come up in the next few weeks for the students. And if any parents want to help with costumes or sets, please email Ms. Karlson at sonja.karlson@burnabyschools.ca

In other news, Carnaval – the Quèbec Winter Festival – will be held at Armstrong the week of 23rd. The entire school is learning the song “Bonhomme, Bonhomme” to sing at the assembly that will kick off this festival. You can practice “Bonhomme, Bonhomme” with the video below:

Happy Holidays from all of the teachers at Armstrong, and from me, Ms. Karlson!

It’s been an unusual Fall for the kids in music class compared to the last two years.

We are able to join together in activities that were not allowed to us through covid.

I want to reiterate for anyone who was not able to come to any performances this December that performing for a live audience is now an unusual experience for the children. The last assembly or concert we did was in 2020! This fall has been full of assemblies and sharing and performances. The children have less experience in these situations, and are therefore more nervous – as is to be expected. I myself and trying to get used to planning for these performances and follow them through, and that is another shift of mind-set for me. I have been shifting and shifting through these past three years of a pandemic, and another shift back to “normal” with children to whom a live performance is unusual is another mind-shift. There is a large learning curve that comes with learning performance skills when one has never or rarely been to a performance!

And I am sure it is a shift for parents as well. There was so much enthusiasm from parents to see their children sharing their gifts on a stage. It was lovely to have the opportunity to give that gift to parents who want to see their children succeed and perform.

And we have been slowly teaching the children how also to be an audience in a live performance. Knowing how to behave in a live performance is foreign to most of our students now. I thank all of my fellow teachers and the parents who were such great audience members through our last few performances. As I said at the Mall and at our December assembly, the kids really need the support and encouragement that was provided by those attending. Being patient and kind and unconditionally supportive is a great way to model the behaviour that makes a great audience great. People can really shine when the audience demonstrates positivity and “takes what is given to them” with enthusiasm. This is something I teach the children. Know that performance decisions are made for a reason. Mistakes can be made and forgiven. The performers are doing their best. Bad audience behaviour will just throw off the performer and make the performance worse. Unconditional support will make it better.

I hope parents, the other students and my colleagues will continue to demonstrate this in the future so Armstrong kids can enjoy performances for the rest of their lives and make us all proud to have modelled this life-skill to them.

Unfortunately, Armstrong students did not make it in to the top ten in the CBC music class challenge. But some Burnaby schools did! Congratulations to Capitol Hill Elementary, Glenwood Elementary, Marlborough Elementary and our neighbour – Second Street! Second Street got two top ten slots! Capitol Hill got in three! Amazing job to my colleagues, Burnaby music teachers!

Here is the link to see the top ten list in each category.

https://www.cbc.ca/music/events/canadian-music-class-challenge/canadian-music-class-challenge-2022-national-top-10s-revealed-1.6668881

Also, Divisions 12 and 15 will be carol singing at Lougheed Mall in front of London Drugs on Thursday, December 15th at 1pm.

Divisions 11, 13 and 14 will be carol singing at 2pm that day.

And our December assembly will be hosted by the grade one classes. It is on December 16th. There will be much sharing of learning and music by many classes. I hope families can join to share in their children’s music making.

Ms. Karlson is looking for performers for the Winter Wonderland walk-through on Tuesday, December 13th. Email her if you are interested at sonja.karlson@burnabyschools.ca

And lastly, grade six and seven students can sign up to be actors in our Spring Concert. Rehearsals will begin right away in January during lunch hours on Mondays and Thursdays. The performance will be on March 8th and 9th. Scripts will be handed out the first week of January and we will cast the play during the second week, so make sure you are serious if you sign up!